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impulsive cries greeting the visitor on first coming on board. The questions were briefly
answered, confirming all that remained to be confirmed of the story. The Negroes about the
windlass joined in with the old sailor, but, as they became talkative, he by degrees became
mute, and at length quite glum, seemed morosely unwilling to answer more questions, and
yet, all the while, this ursine air was somehow mixed with his sheepish one.
Despairing of getting into unembarrassed talk with such a centaur, Captain Delano, after
glancing round for a more promising countenance, but seeing none, spoke pleasantly to the
blacks to make way for him; and so, amid various grins and grimaces, returned to the poop,
feeling a little strange at first, he could hardly tell why, but upon the whole with regained
confidence in Benito Cereno.
How plainly, thought he, did that old whiskerando yonder betray a consciousness of
ill-desert. No doubt, when he saw me coming, he dreaded lest I, apprised by his captain of
the crew's general misbehaviour, came with sharp words for him, and so down with his
head. And yet- and yet, now that I think of it, that very old fellow, if I err not, was one of
those who seemed so earnestly eyeing me here awhile since. Ah, these currents spin one's
head round almost as much as they do the ship. Ha, there now's a pleasant sort of sunny
sight; quite sociable, too.
His attention had been drawn to a slumbering Negress, partly disclosed through the
lace-work of some rigging, lying, with youthful limbs carelessly disposed, under the lee of
the bulwarks, like a doe in the shade of a woodland rock. Sprawling at her lapped breasts
was her wide-awake fawn, stark naked, its black little body half lifted from the deck,
crosswise with its dam's; its hands, like two paws, clambering upon her; its mouth and nose
ineffectually rooting to get at the mark; and meantime giving a vexatious half-grunt,
blending with the composed snore of the Negress.
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The uncommon vigour of the child at length roused the mother. She started up, at distance
facing Captain Delano. But, as if not at all concerned at the attitude in which she had been
caught, delightedly she caught the child up, with maternal transports, covering it with
kisses.
There's naked nature, now; pure tenderness and love, thought Captain Delano, well
pleased.
This incident prompted him to remark the other Negresses more particularly than before.
He was gratified with their manners; like most uncivilized women, they seemed at once
tender of heart and tough of constitution; equally ready to die for their infants or fight for
them. Unsophisticated as leopardesses; loving as doves. Ah! thought Captain Delano, these
perhaps are some of the very women whom Mungo Park saw in Africa, and gave such a
noble account of.
These natural sights somehow insensibly deepened his confidence and ease. At last he
looked to see how his boat was getting on; but it was still pretty remote. He turned to see if
Don Benito had returned; but he had not.
To change the scene, as well as to please himself with a leisurely observation of the coming
boat, stepping over into the mizzen-chains he clambered his way into the starboard
quarter-galley; one of those abandoned Venetian-looking water-balconies previously
mentioned; retreats cut off from the deck. As his foot pressed the half-damp, half-dry
sea-mosses matting the place, and a chance phantom cat's-paw- an islet of breeze,
unheralded, unfollowed- as this ghostly cat's-paw came fanning his cheek, his glance fell
upon the row of small, round dead-lights, all closed like coppered eyes of the coffined, and
the state-cabin door, once connecting with the gallery, even as the dead-lights had once
looked out upon it, but now caulked fast like a sarcophagus lid, to a purple-black,
tarred-over panel, threshold, and post; and he bethought him of the time, when that
state-cabin and this state-balcony had heard the voices of the Spanish king's officers, and
the forms of the Lima viceroy's daughters had perhaps leaned where he stood- as these and
other images flitted through his mind, as the cat's-paw through the calm, gradually he felt
rising a dreamy inquietude, like that of one who alone on the prairie feels unrest from the
repose of the noon.
He leaned against the carved balustrade, again looking off toward his boat; but found his
eye falling upon the ribboned grass, trailing along the ship's water-line, straight as a border
of green box; and parterres of sea-weed, broad ovals and crescents, floating nigh and far,
with what seemed long formal alleys between, crossing the terraces of swells, and
sweeping round as if leading to the grottoes below. And overhanging all was the balustrade
by his arm, which, partly stained with pitch and partly embossed with moss, seemed the
charred ruin of some summer-house in a grand garden long running to waste.
Trying to break one charm, he was but becharmed anew. Though upon the wide sea, he
seemed in some far inland country; prisoner in some deserted chateau, left to stare at empty
grounds, and peer out at vague roads, where never wagon or wayfarer passed.
But these enchantments were a little disenchanted as his eye fell on the corroded
main-chains. Of an ancient style, massy and rusty in link, shackle and bolt, they seemed
even more fit for the ship's present business than the one for which probably she had been
built.
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Presently he thought something moved nigh the chains. He rubbed his eyes, and looked
hard. Groves of rigging were about the chains; and there, peering from behind a great stay,
like an Indian from behind a hemlock, a Spanish sailor, a marlingspike in his hand, was
seen, who made what seemed an imperfect gesture toward the balcony- but immediately, as
if alarmed by some advancing step along the deck within, vanished into the recesses of the
hempen forest, like a poacher.
What meant this? Something the man had sought to communicate, unbeknown to any one,
even to his captain? Did the secret involve aught unfavourable to his captain? Were those
previous misgivings of Captain Delano's about to be verified? Or, in his haunted mood at
the moment, had some random, unintentional motion of the man, while busy with the stay,
as if repairing it, been mistaken for a significant beckoning?
Not unbewildered, again he gazed off for his boat. But it was temporarily hidden by a
rocky spur of the isle. As with some eagerness he bent forward, watching for the first
shooting view of its beak, the balustrade gave way before him like charcoal. Had he not
clutched an outreaching rope he would have fallen into the sea. The crash, though feeble,
and the fall, though hollow, of the rotten fragments, must have been overheard. He glanced
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